1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to cellular communication systems, and more particularly to an overlay to an existing cellular switching structure to provide post-second generation services without the need to make modifications or updates to the existing infrastructure.
2. Description of Related Art
The demand by consumers all over the world for mobile communications continues to expand at a rapid pace and will continue to do so for at least the next decade. Over 100 million people were using a mobile service by the end of 1995, and that number is expected to grow to 300 million by the year 2000. Several factors are contributing to the exciting growth in the telecommunications industry. For example, a combination of technology and competition bring more value to consumers. Phones are smaller, lighter, had a longer battery life, and are affordable now for the mass market. Operators are providing excellent voice quality, innovative services, and roaming across the country or world. Most important, mobility is becoming less expensive for people to use. Around the world, as well as in the United States, governments are licensing additional spectrum for new operators to compete with traditional cellular operators. Competition brings innovation, new services, and lower prices for consumers.
For cellular telephony to continue its spectacular growth, it must handle more subscribers per base station and higher-bandwidth services. Toward that end, the industry's third technology generation (3G) is envisioned as a move beyond voice-only terminals to information communicators that will pass images and data.
Europe's Universal Mobile Telecommunications Standard (UMTS) is the follow-on to the second-generation Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) digital cellular standard. The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is intended to provide a worldwide standard for personal mobile communications with the mass-market appeal and quality of wireline services. Over recent years, digital cellular technologies, such as GSM, have led the way towards personal communications, making mobile communications available to millions of users all around the world at reasonable cost. But to match the UMTS vision, a communications system must include support for flexible bearer and bandwidth-on-demand services for local (indoor) environments and for wide area coverage; a variety of mixed traffic types and relevant charging capability for mobile multimedia applications; customized services, service creation environments and service flexibility using, for example, intelligent network (IN) tools; and wideband wireless local loop (WLL) enhancement to the fixed network.
However, the wireless market in the United States is not as settled. For example, there are efforts to pursue a third-generation mobile standard based on the CDMA-One air interface.
Accordingly, any post-second generation air interface, e.g., a post-second generation (3G) air interface, must provide high speed packet data and second generation services as a subset of the post-second generation services. Herein post-second generation will be used to referred to any type of entity that is developed and implemented after the second generation entities.
As operators are forced to implement post-second generation infrastructure, second generation switching infrastructure must be modified or replaced to support the new services such as high speed packet data. Still, the framework of the existing infrastructure may not be optimal for support of post-second generation services, and practically, the operator may have to stay with the same switch supplier.
It can be seen that there is a need for a method and system that preserves second generation switching while providing post-second generation services.
It can also be seen that there is a need for an overlay to existing switching infrastructure to provide post-second generation services without requiring modifications or updating to the existing infrastructure.